The Supreme Court will this morning give its ruling on whether the witnesses for the First and Second Respondents should testify in the ongoing election petition hearing.

This follows a decision by the counsels for the Electoral Commission (EC) and President Akufo-Addo not to call forth any witnesses to give evidence in court.

On Tuesday, the two counsels cited Order 38, rule 3 (e) sub-rule 1 and 5 of CI 47 as amended by CI 87 as the basis for their decision to close their case and not call a witness.

While lead counsel for the EC, Justin Amenuvor, supporting his argument with Section 62 of the Evidence Act, held the view that the court cannot compel his client to testify against her will, the lead counsel for the President, Akoto Ampaw maintained that the burden of proof lies with the petitioner and not the respondents.

But disputing these arguments, lead counsel for the petitioner, Tsatsu Tsikata said since the lawyers have not made a submission of no case, the burden of proof does not apply as argued by the lawyers for the EC and Akufo-Addo.

Mr. Tsikata also explained that the EC Chair had earlier indicated during the application for some interrogatories to be served that she was going to submit herself to cross-examination; the basis for which the court took the decision to dismiss Mr. Mahama’s application.

He insists that the statement by the EC Chairperson, Jean Mensa through various affidavits available binds her to be cross-examined.

Again, Mr. Tsikata told the apex court that the EC Chair also has a constitutional duty to give accounts of events that led to the December 9, 2020 election declarations and to clarify how some errors were made.

The 7-member panel of judges made up of the Chief Justice, Anin-Yeboah; Justices Yaw Appau, Marful Sau, Professor Ashie Kotei, Mariama Owusu, Nene Amegatcher, and Gertrude Tokonor subsequently set today, Thursday, February 11, 2021 to give its verdict.

EC Chairperson Jean Mensa and NPP’s Peter Mac Manu’s witness statement

The EC’s statement covered 6 pages and was signed by Jean Mensa.

She commences her testimony by stating that the information she’s putting across is from her own knowledge of events leading to the filing of the petition and other matters that have come after.

Among other things she stated that the results of the 2020 elections held on December 7 were collated in accordance with Public Elections Regulations, 2020 (C.I 127).

She points out that Nana Akufo-Addo obtained 6,730,413 of the valid votes cast while John Mahama got 6,214,889.

She adds that the total valid votes stood at 13,121,111.

These figures she asserts shows that Mr. Akufo-Addo got more than 50% of the valid votes.

Peter Mac Manu’s testimony

The NPP’s Peter Mac Manu commences his testimony by stating that Nana Akufo-Addo has appointed him to testify on his behalf.

He sets off the testimony by saying the petition is without merit and based on unfounded and misconceived assumptions.

He explains that the petition does not disclose any attack on the validity of the election held throughout the 38,622 polling stations and 311 special voting centers.

He described the allegations of wrong aggregation of votes and vote padding as “empty and collectively involve about 6,622 votes- this is a sum patently insignificant to materially affect the outcome of an election which 2nd respondent defeated Petitioner by well over 500,000 votes.

He also stated that Mr. Mahama does not disclose in the petition the number of valid votes he believes he actually obtained and what Mr. Mahama believes Nana Akufo-Addo got to merit a run off.

“The Petition is largely conjectural and borne out of petitioner’s unfounded imagination”, Mr. Manu adds.

The entire petition he argues is premised on the insignificant accuracies and slips made by the EC Chairperson in her declaration.

He insists further that the petition is a ruse and face-saving gimmick deployed by Mr. Mahama after the official results declared by the EC and election observers showed he had lost the polls despite claiming victory earlier.